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Session 5

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Session 5

Representing the soil as a load only.

The stiffness of the soil doesn’t come into it.

Of course in real life, it’s more complex...

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Session 5

.As the structure moves away from the soil, the earth pressures reduce from the
at-rest pressure, towards the limiting active pressure - Ka
On the other hand, when the structure moves into the soil, earth pressures
increase towards passive - Kp

But the actual earth pressure may be some intermediate value, depending on the
strain in the soil – depending how much the wall has moved.
In bridges with decks joints and bearings, the abutments are typically subjected
only to pressures between at-rest and active: low pressures.
In integral abutments, when summer comes, the deck expands and the earth
pressures will be significantly greater.

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Session 5

From winter to summer the earth pressures increase, with an accompanying


change in the bending moments illustrated here.
But the repeated, cyclical movement of the integral abutments causes particle
realignment in granular backfill. So each year, while the winter pressures don’t
change much the peak summer pressures get greater, so we see here the moments
in the abutment walls increase each year - as the backfill becomes stiffer each
year....

It’s called “soil ratchetting”.


And this process only tails off after 100-200 cycles. The pressures behind integral
abutments built in the last 20 or 30 years are still ramping up now.

Clearly, for design, we ought to have a good idea what the lateral earth pressures
are going to end up at, given a design life of the order 75 years (according to the
LRFD specification). But there is no standard approach for determining earth
pressures for integral abutments in LRFD, nor are there any in the Eurocodes.

However, there has been quite a bit of research, and this has recently been
brought together to define some recommendations, published by the British
Standards...

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Session 5

In PD6694-1. This pressure distribution reflects how the “densification” of the


backfill gives quite a significant increase in earth pressure over the top half of the
wall - where the movements are greatest - and has a relatively lesser effect lower
down the wall.

That distribution is for full height abutment walls, where the thermal movements
are accommodated by rotation or flexure.
For short walls – as in bank pads or end screen abutments, thermal movements
are accommodated by pure translation. For those, we can use a much simpler
“triangular” pressure distribution.

But for both cases, we have this “special” earth pressure coefficient for integral
bridges, generally given the symbol K*

But essentially by conceiving of a pressure distribution like this, we are again


using a limiting equilibrium approach.

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Session 5

And that’s fine for a range of integral abutment types such as these:
Full height integral abutments on pad footings or pairs of piles, and bank pads

Internationally the problem has been having a way to calculate a value for K*
which agrees with the research. That’s where the UK recommendations in
PD6694-1 finally have expressions which have been validated against a wide
range of the available data.
... Simple though they seem these expressions are a big step forward.

For full height abutments, K* is based upon


The at-rest pressure coefficient, Ko
The passive pressure coefficient, Kp;t
The wall movement range at mid-height, d’d, which can be taken as between 0.5
and 0.7 times the movement at deck level – probably 0.5 for the piled wall.
And a coefficient, C, which is based on the elastic modulus of the subgrade.

For bank pad abutments– where the movement is translational - it’s a similar,
actually slightly simpler expression.

So we can calculate the earth pressures, using K*, and apply them to ...

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Session 5

An analysis model of the bridge. It’s a “limiting equilibrium” approach. We’d


need to consider the minimum earth pressures – active, Ka - as well as the
maximum – K*.

And PD6694-1 also gives guidance on the appropriate pressures for wingwalls,
bearing in mind this ... soil ratchetting effect.

I’ve illustrated a short span slab deck bridge modelled with shell elements here,
but it’s worth considering, for a moment, the structural idealisation of the bridge
itself. Because …

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Session 5

The K* approach is not adequate.

For example, these common integral bridge types – including embedded walls
and those, including bank pads, on a single row of piles.

To model this soil-structure interaction – SSI – we can typically either represent


the soil as a continuum, or using springs.

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Session 5

... embedded walls.

But we have still the abutments or bank pads on piles, where lateral movement at
the pile head does not infer plane lateral movement of the soil in the same way
that movement of a retaining wall does. There may be some arching of soil
between piles – some judgement may be needed. This makes continuum models
less attractive and the use of springs to represent the soil more attractive.

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Session 5

A Full height integral abutment on pad footing,


Full height integral abutment on piles
Or a bank pad
… can typically be analysed with a structural model and soil pressures based on a
[click] K* approach.

Since, for these construction types, granular backfill is usually installed behind
the abutments, strain ratcheting must be taken into account, and the formulae for
K* in PD6694-1 incorporates this

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